To the editor:

Referring to Gov. LePage’s statement, I submit this.

My father was as decent a man as there ever was. “Clean as the driven snow” would fit him well.

In the ’50s, when I was still in high school, the IRS determined that my father, a family physician in Lebanon, Ky., had made a mistake on his income tax return. The agents that came were not nice. They leveled a hefty fine on my father, which even now, I continue to feel was cruel. They, in fact, were what I’d call “Gestapo-like” in the way they treated dad.

Mind you, the ’50s were not very far removed from the awful things the Germans had done during “the war.” So I know what this reference of which I speak means.

Why is it that we fear our government rather than respect it?

My understanding is that the IRS hasn’t changed much.

David N. Widmer

Brunswick